


Hija de la Luna

by vikaliya



Series: Hija de la Luna [1]
Category: Gymnastics RPF
Genre: F/F, Gymnastics, Mustamova
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:52:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vikaliya/pseuds/vikaliya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate universe story surrounding Viktoria and Aliya.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hija de la Luna

The voices of the night hang curtains around her small frame, mending the shadows where she breaks them with her white limbs, only for her small, smiling hands to tear the rearing, wheezing night back to a void once more, flat under her steps. She is no towering goddess, no pedestal-bound figure drenched in the glow shed by perpetual prayer. The elders were right about her agility, Vika thinks, but even their oldest, most well-worn stories cannot catch this beautiful one in still lines. Vika herself already feels her words dry back on her tongue, their ink forming a soft marble in her stomach. They promised her that this would be painless, that the children of the Moon seldom took the humans presented to them anymore. The vast majority of disappearances took place many, many years ago, when the high, watery shape of the woods had not yet receded from their land. Most of the tributes that have since gone woke up peacefully in the quiet clearing, all memories of their night erased as they left with only a single scar- a haunting, glass recollection that waxed and waned with the moon- dark eyes that burn sometimes amber, sometimes green.

            Few amongst the people know what the children of the Moon really look like, but all of the previously chosen tributes remember their eyes. No one else dares to come close enough to see the rest. Vika was given just one instruction before coming here alone this night, the same that all of the other tributes received.

“Find what it is in you that will set her free, and she will do the same for you.”

            The night lays down where the faery presses it into the soft, springy moss with a brush of her muted curves. When she leaps, Vika can only believe that she is a deer, speckled with a silver, leaf-printed mantle that slips off her shoulders when she bounds across the wide clearing in a knotted, twirling string of twists and flips. Vika herself is to perform for the faery beneath the full Moon, having learned many of these same skills. They’ve been handed down by generations of select tributes who later rose to be priests and priestesses at the temple of the Moon, where faeries and humans used to worship side by side. It is said that if a child of the Earth does not fear to look long into those ever-present eyes of dreams, he or she would remember all that happens under the full moon in the hypnotic presence of the Moon’s children.

            As usual, the faery ends her routine with her slender fingers framing her face with a flourish, a collar of flesh and bone as she looks into the face of the Moon, her distant light of stone. When she is only met with the rushing of the wind, asleep as could be, she steps back with eyes of flint. It is Vika’s turn, and a rush of excitement blooms in her body, leafing into her muscle memory. She has been training for this for as long as she can remember, though with her first glance into faery eyes she no longer remembers why.

At the back of her mind, a small voice opens a window.

_Perhaps you are dying, Vika. Perhaps those eyes are killing you. Perhaps that’s why people come home, but their minds do not._

It is too late, though, to run from this. The sight of the faery, so cold and pale, makes her heart dissolve into a spidery heat. Clothed in the fabric of the night sky complete with impossible, dissonant stars, her presence is light and yet magnetic, tugging on Vika’s blood like no one ever has before. In this moment, the faery appears all too open, too soft for all of the stories. Vika needs all of her focus to carry out her routine, her bare feet mercifully cushioned by the thick bed of moss underfoot. Memory takes over, nearly instinct as she launches forward into elaborate tumbling across the clearing. Between breaths as she slides into dance elements, she cannot help but look at the one who watches her so intently, with an expression stiff in the hinges of an old, unopened locket. Those deep, haunting eyes are sad, falling in time like the echoes bruising the walls of a narrow wishing well. It’s hard to think that the faery sees her at all, beyond the muted frenzy that belongs to the realm of the Moon.

It must be performed perfectly, after all. Every landing must be stuck, every gesture of the hands pleasing and fluid even as the heart tears and screams for respite. Even if it breaks in the light of those amber eyes, Vika cannot stop until she finishes the routine. Her pointed toes and straight legs twist through the air before she lands and launches into a leap. Need anyone tell her that the faeries must be appeased, lest they should stray out of the woods and onto human lands? Need anyone remind her of the Dark Days?

Her only comfort is that the faery is reassuring in her quiet elegance, spellbinding with her dark winter coloring and the heavy grace of her gait. She is young, too. Perhaps she is no older than Vika herself. There is something like a smile washing to the corners of those smooth, rosy lips, though the expression remains pooled in her eyes. Here comes the reckoning, then. Vika hits her final pose, her heart unbound when the strain of evening song stops just right, just as she has been practicing with it all these years. By night, the choirs of faeries hiding in the trees of the temple complex were constant, unseen companions in her youth, and they have not failed her tonight. Their songs would be as lovely as ever, if it weren’t for the solemn eyes resting on Vika’s small frame.

When she relaxes, the pale faery beckons her over with a floating lily hand. If the faery were not in such as position of power, Vika would think her shy. Without comment, though, Vika approaches slowly, feeling very nervous. What if she made a mistake? What if she didn’t point her toes enough? Her mother certainly cried very hard when Vika left, and no one would tell her why. Vika just wants to go home, really. She’s done with her part as tribute, isn’t she? The priestesses did not teach her anything beyond the routine. It could not have been perfect, but it was still the task of her life. The faery just looks at her, though, like she is a book yet to be opened.

“What is your name, miss?”

The voice slides low under the wind, calming even as every frightening story of Vika’s childhood rises from the long moors of her memory.

“Viktoria.”

“Come with me, then, Miss Viktoria.”

A cold hand takes hers and pulls her through a thick stretch of woods to a larger clearing adjacent to this one, where the damp old trees have dusty shadows in charcoal even as their thin limbs send fine cracks through the dark horizon. The most striking aspect, though, is the impossibly still pond they overlook. The wind is cut to shreds on the thorny vines that frame Vika’s view, its tatters brushing Vika’s hair as she emerges from the trees that guard this secret place. Save for the ghostly, polishing ripples thin on its surface, too shallow to be true, there is nothing that would make this pond any more than a mirror.

A green carpet of plush moss grows over the rocks on the jagged shore of the pond, the same kind of verdancy that coated the floor when they watched each other dance. Vika follows silently when the faery sits on it, drawing up an intricately woven basket from a crevice. Now that both of them are still, Vika cannot help but notice the true depth of the longing in the eyes of the faery, as if she might never smile properly again. Perhaps she is going to kill Vika, and this is just a formality. Perhaps she is the exception to the rule. Vika is already plagued by the last cries of her mother when she closes her eyes.  _Too perfect_ , her mother said.  _You are too perfect._

“You do not look well, Miss Viktoria.”

The gentleness in her voice would be cruel if her eyes were not so honest in their concern.

“Are you cold?”

When Vika finds that she knows not how to respond, there is a trickle of fragrance and steam thick as clay as the faery pours an infusion into a small, earthenware cup.

“Here. Please drink. It’ll make you feel better.”

To show that the drink is harmless, the faery pours herself a cup and takes a long sip. It certainly smells good, its honey wrapping around Vika’s memory of autumn. Vika has to fight hard not to watch as the faery licks her lips ever so softly, her plump lower lip wet and slightly blue under the glow of the Moon.

When she presses the drink to her own lips, Vika feels the fatigue in her muscles dull and fall, the nervous rush of moments previous settling over her in a fine coat of dust. The drink is not too sweet, taking the bitter laugh of tea and weaving it over with shy mint leaves. When she finds that she is still in full possession of her senses and limbs, she pushes aside her worries of poison. If anything, she is heady with the sights and sounds of the clearing as she takes in everything around her. Now that the world is no longer moving, it is so much sharper, connected tightly in the lens of the still lake threaded with straight, silver moonlight. Perhaps there is a small likelihood that she will survive this ordeal intact after all. The faery seems more curious about her than anything, hungry for little more than the carefully wrapped fruits in her basket. Indeed, she offers an odd-looking peach to Vika, her smile warm and inviting as she bites into her own piece of fruit.

“You dance so beautifully, Miss Viktoria. If I did not know any better, I would think that you were a faery yourself.”

When Vika does not take the fruit, she withdraws it and awkwardly puts it back into her basket, hesitating all the while. The juice that stains her hands is creamy in color, opaque with a tint of purple. Vika has never seen anything like it.

“What is your name?”

The faery smiles as she reclines against the rocks. A peach is set out on a plain white handkerchief, subtly and intricately embroidered. The offer is still open, then.

“Aliya.”

Vika decides that anything that could have happened to her would have taken effect with her drink. She might as well enjoy herself. 

“You don’t have to call me ‘Miss’ anymore, Aliya. I’m not royalty or anything.”

The peach tastes the same as any other peach that Vika’s ever had, to her surprise.

“I just want to put you at ease, Miss Viktoria. I was taught that humans tend to be frightened of my kind. I didn’t want you to be.”

With that calm, even voice and its regular inflections, half of Vika’s mind rises up in a firm wave of protest while the other half quickly hides away in silence, icy and distant in the face of this strange reality.

“I’ve trained all my life for this. I know not what happens once I’ve finished what I’ve practiced for so many years.”

The faery smiles, the melancholy obvious in her gaze.

“You will be initiated in the Mysteries, perhaps.”

Mysteries indeed. All of this is just one big mystery to most people, something they…learn, perhaps, only to never remember again. In the end, all that they keep are the eyes. The same eyes looking at her right now, keeping her close even as she would rather slip away into the darkness.

“If the humans are not taught to fear, they will all come rushing into our realm, lured by the prospect of magic. It is better this way. I hope you will see that, Miss Viktoria.”

The faery’s calm patience makes her comfortable, brave enough to question, however. Vika finds that her voice emerges from her thoughts frigid and steady as her life waits beyond the clearing, just through the trees. 

“How is it better to fear? My mother cried when I left. Most of the village is under the impression that I am to be killed. They look at me, at us, Anastasia and Ksenia and…”

Her voice falters.

_Ksenia_.

Ksenia was the last to disappear. Her grave is empty, finished and filled with packed earth. 

“…and they look at us like we’re virgin sacrifices.”

“Please trust me, Miss Viktoria.”

The faery’s eyes are veiled, and Vika starts to wonder if their state of sorrow is permanent. Perhaps they are lonelier than they are kind.

“Everyone who ever disappears with  _your_  kind is assumed dead, and I’m supposed to just trust you?”

She is afraid, but she dares Aliya to take her away, dares her to say that she is wrong. Deep down she wants to believe that everything that the world has told her is just one big lie because their little, forgotten temple was right all along.  That does not seem likely, though. The faery does not protest. Her smile only frustrates Vika further. Perhaps Aliya is not so young, so naïve.

“Even if you knew all of this, you still came tonight. You were still willing to sacrifice a decade of your life, if not all of your time in this world, to work for this. If all of this is so frightening to you, then why did you volunteer?”

As if they are just discussing the weather, Aliya continues to nibble at her peach, her fingers stained a dark, royal purple.

“Why would you do such a thing, Miss Viktoria?”

The rims of the faery’s eyes sparkle fiercely in stardust, silver painted wings jutting smoothly from dark lids. There is a storm in the nightly horizon of her eyes as she pours more liquid into Vika’s cup. It is not so innocent, Vika realizes, but she cannot stop. Her body is cold without it.

“I-I…”

It is difficult to meet those eyes again. Surely the faery will mock her for this. The stories. Her mind always goes back to the stories, told long ago before she left for the white marble halls of the temple. Surely they weren’t just lures for the gullible? The terrible ones told in the village square explained why there must be tributes willing to meet the faeries in the woods far away from civilization, but then there were the good ones. These were told to bind the heat of winter’s fire with the shadows dancing on the lifeless walls- a world for all beings where there are rivers of dim light hovering in the air, close enough for a small child to play in; whole palaces spun of spider’s silk glimmering after a storm.

In such stories, this world of the fey would be revealed when a faery should smile upon a tribute. Tales of such instances were few and far in between, but they were there just the same.  No matter how hard the training and the tumbling was, Vika never forgot the stories. As she drinks her tea, though, so bitter and chilled, a loose tear trickles down her cheek. There were never very many of them, even she loved them. The best of them were told to tatters over the years, while the darkness of the other stories always sent a fresh, looming canvas over her night if she did not close her eyes to them.

“Miss Viktoria?”

The faery perches precariously, her bare feet mounted on a bare patch of stone as Vika feebly crawls down into a shallow crevice, hugging her knees close to her.

“The stories…no one telling them could think they were ever real, but deep in my heart I believed all of them. I wanted to see,” and she gulps down a sob, “I wanted to see if there is really a world more beautiful than my own. I wanted to land in it feet first.”

When she takes another long draught, it takes an eternity to swallow. On its way, it spins ice in her throat, slowly wrapping shivers around her spine. She feels dizzy, now, even if her words are honest. When the faery says nothing, Vika continues even as her words stall and stumble.

“Everyone likes to tell the temple’s children that the stories are just pretty ways to explain how people dream before they go off to lay down their lives in front of the faeries, too deep in the woods for any of us to go looking for them. We all get scared, but we keep going because that’s all we know.”

She leans down against the rock, her eyes fixated on the faery peering down at her. Seventeen years old after a decade of believing what her world sees as faery tales, she has played the fool. She brings her cup to her lips as they turn blue, unable to turn it away even as her hands shake.

“I want to see that other place if it’s there, even if it kills me first.”

She’s taught herself to say that. Children are supposed to grow up, but the world grew up around the temple of the Moon. She certainly never strayed far enough from those stories to see them the way everyone else did. Before Vika can protest, Aliya edges down into her crevice with her, both arms around her in a gesture tangible enough to make her realize that all of this will be no more than a dream, even if she survives.

“Please let me go home, Aliya. You know better than I do if my life so far has really been a lie.”

The faery just stays and pulls Vika closer as her body goes completely numb, her muscles paralyzed. Vika cannot even flinch as the faery plants a warm kiss on her cheek, brushing back wisps of ash blonde hair to whisper in her ear.

“Curiosity is not a sin, and it certainly cannot make your life a lie.”

Her hands are calloused, soothing and skilled as they unravel Vika’s tension. They set aside the cup so that her lips and her tears are allowed to dry, her body allowed to warm itself in time kept only by the Moon. Soon, Vika finds herself draped against the faery’s frame, her eyes growing heavy as the faery food finally allows the deep night to settle around her. Before the pinpricks of stars swell into orbs, seeping into the darkness, the strangest words cross the faery’s lips before they seal Vika’s sleep with another kiss.

“Miss Viktoria, I should let you know that your stories were true.” 


End file.
